Chapter 216

Two hundred and twelve: all sevens.

Just as Misaki Naomi reached the corner of the stairs, she suddenly turned back, revealing an ugly, forced smile. "Um, the stairs are too dark, I don't want to walk alone... Also... if it's okay, Uncle, please stay in my room tonight."

He Jia'an was speechless, but he nodded nonetheless.

Upon arriving in Misaki Naomi's room, He Jia'an took a look around her boudoir, then watched her back as she made the bed for him. Thinking of the ghost hand he had just seen, he couldn't help but ask: "That video call, it was answered by both you and Heize, right?"

Misaki Naomi stiffened instantly, slowly turned her head to look at He Jia'an, and said with her head lowered, "Did you guess it?"

"More or less." He Jia'an didn't have the heart to say that he had seen an anomaly on her; otherwise, this young girl would follow in the footsteps of that classmate named Heize, ending her own life before the so-called "Mimiko's Curse" could even be fulfilled.

Only then did Misaki Naomi begin to honestly recount the sequence of events: "Yesterday at the convenience store, Jiana's phone received a video call invitation from the legendary Mimiko. Because this horror legend is particularly popular lately, we were terrified for a moment, threw our phones away, and didn't dare to answer. Afterward, you, Uncle, cautiously picked up the phone and returned it to Jiana, and Jiana pulled me out of the convenience store."

"After that, the call disappeared, and there wasn't even a missed call notification, as if it were just a hallucination, so we breathed a temporary sigh of relief. However, what happened next exceeded our understanding. Subsequently, Jiana's phone received another video call invitation. We were both startled, but when we saw the caller was Jiana's mother, we relaxed again and answered the call with our guard down."

"But the moment we answered, the caller ID changed to that hellish number that shouldn't exist. The legendary Mimiko appeared; her ruined, bloody, and mangled face and deformed figure appeared on the phone screen. We were both terrified and tried to end the call but had no way to do so. We could only watch her helplessly and listen to her say, 'Seven days later, I will come to find you,' before she hung up."

"At that moment, Mimiko's number became an undeletable contact, and the call log appeared and could not be deleted either. We both knew then that we had truly become the protagonists of an Urban Legend, and that in seven days, we would be dragged into hell by Mimiko. Afterward, Jiana ran away like she had gone mad, and I spent this day and night in fear all by myself..."

After listening earnestly to Misaki Naomi's account, He Jia'an pondered for a moment, then said to the young girl in a gentle tone, "Don't think about it so much for now. Go take a nice, comfortable bath first."

"Mm." Misaki Naomi nodded, looking somewhat dejected.

Afterward, the cliché horror scenes in the bathroom did not occur. Misaki Naomi had a refreshing bath, but when it was He Jia'an's turn, the young girl insisted on going in with him, stating that she would be scared staying in the hallway alone and claiming she would turn her back and definitely not peek.

In public, He Jia'an might care about his reputation, but in this enclosed space with just the two of them, he didn't have much integrity left. Since the young girl had made such a bold request, he wouldn't refuse, and he didn't care whether she would actually keep her promise not to peek.

Finally able to get into bed, He Jia'an lay down on the prepared floor bedding, and Misaki Naomi slept on the bed.

"Goodnight." He Jia'an looked at the light still on in the room and got up to turn it off.

"Wait!" Seeing this, Misaki Naomi immediately climbed out of bed to stop him, glaring as she said, "At the very least, leave a light on for me."

"Fine." He Jia'an didn't mind; he left a small lamp on for Misaki Naomi and then lay back down in his bedding.

Afterward, Misaki Naomi, a girl burdened with worries, likely found it hard to fall asleep, so she started chatting with He Jia'an about the past.

Most of the time, it was Misaki Naomi talking and He Jia'an listening. Later, Misaki Naomi probably realized she had said too much and feared He Jia'an would find her annoying, so she wanted to pass the "microphone" to him and let him talk about his own past.

He Jia'an naturally couldn't say, and didn't dare to. After all, his experiences as a Mysterious Investigator were far more terrifying than Misaki Naomi's current predicament. If he wasn't careful, he might end up telling another horror story and scaring the poor girl, so He Jia'an could only talk about some interesting past events unrelated to his profession.

Just like that, the two traded sentences back and forth, slowly forgetting the time, until Misaki Naomi's physiological instinct for sleep overcame her fear, and she drifted off.

He Jia'an was finally able to settle down. He then sat up, looked at the sleeping Misaki Naomi, hesitated for a moment, reached into his pocket, took out the New Year Red Envelope, took a deep breath, and placed it on the tatami mat outside the floor bedding.

The moment his hand left the Red Envelope, He Jia'an felt a chill shoot from the corners of his eyes straight into his brain. In the blink of an eye, the colors of the world changed, turning into the gloomy hues he had been most familiar with over the past few years—dark, as if all life were decaying.

The eyes that had been peeping at him and troubling him in the mental sanitarium had vanished without a trace, but he could still feel forces that shouldn't exist in this dimension permeating the world. He could see twisted, rotting plant vines eroding the house, gray mist shrouding the sky above the city, and gray fluffs slowly drifting down from the unknown depths of the fog.

He Jia'an was intimately familiar with all these anomalies and felt no emotional fluctuation.

When his gaze shifted to Misaki Naomi, the scene before him suddenly made his pupils shrink. He saw Misaki Naomi sleeping on her side, exposing her back to him. From the back of her head, two black hands were reaching out from a torn gap, and between the slits, an emotionless eye was watching him.

It was as if Misaki Naomi had become a cocoon, and something hidden inside her body was about to crawl out.

"It really wasn't an illusion." He Jia'an noticed that the two black hands had extended further than when he first saw them; now, almost two entire arms were about to emerge.

If his guess was correct, the thing about to crawl out of Misaki Naomi's body was Mimiko from that Urban Legend. When Mimiko crawled out of Misaki Naomi's body... that would be the moment the legend was fulfilled.

"Seven days, just like the Blessing of that videotape from before; they are all the same cursed number." He Jia'an found some familiar feelings in this Mimiko.